The Flower of Insight

Do you think of grasses as bearing flowers? They do. All grasses flower if not cut and a wide variety of grasses exist in the plant realm. Many people see grass as the short, mowed green stuff in their yard. They never see it full grown on the stem flowering out into full blossom dropping pollen, and if they do see it, they don't really notice it.

This orchard grass stem was imaged one afternoon while I fished along the shoreline of the lower Clark Fork River on the banks of Derr Island, where my wife and I had gone to enjoy an afternoon barbeque with Jerry & Gale Sherman and others. Satisfied with meal and friends I dropped down to the river to try my luck. I caught more photographs than fish. This one stood out as one of my favorites of the day.

It reminds me of the way insight comes. Insight, like this grass-top flower fully laden with fertile pollen, blossoms out on the stem of perceptive thought. You look at something, watch it, analyze it and think about it for a time, forgetting about the flow of life around you and then as the thought ripens, it suddenly blooms into insight. "Aha!" you say. You've caught hold of something you didn't realize before.

I love moments like that, just like I love this flower shot of river grass in bloom. Think about it. Flowers and thoughts bloom in the same way. Both grow out of a soil of sorts nurtured in one way or another until they bud into pregnancy. Then suddenly, with predestined magic, they blossom to release their fertility on yet more flowers or thought.

###Dwayne K. Parsons